Kaleidoscope

"They were supposed to be friends. But somewhere along the way, they became everything."

Jules Maybank has spent her whole life surviving-surviving a broken home, an abusive relationship, and the kind of pain that never fully leaves. She's mastered the art of pretending: perfect smiles, brushed-over bruises, and telling everyone she's fine when she's falling apart inside. She's the tough one. The quiet storm. The girl with sharp eyes and softer scars.

John B. Routledge has always been her constant-ever since she ran into him in the third grade with juice box hands and wide-eyed wonder. He was her secret first love, her middle school boyfriend, the one who saw her before the world broke her. But that was then. And this is now.

Now, she belongs to someone else. Now, she's the girl behind guarded eyes and walls too high to climb. And John B? He's just trying to keep his own world from falling apart.
But as fate keeps pulling them back together-late-night conversations, unspoken glances, shared silence where words don't reach-John B starts to see what's been right in front of him this whole time. That maybe Jules Maybank isn't just his past. Maybe she's his future.
And Jules? She starts to realize that love doesn't have to hurt. That maybe she doesn't have to shrink herself to be wanted. That maybe, just maybe, she can be loved like she's the only girl in the world-by the one boy who always saw her, even when she couldn't see herself.

In a world that's torn them down, can they choose each other?
Or will love slip away before either of them is brave enough to reach for it?
He was the calm in her storm. She was the light he didn't know he needed.
And together? They might just be everything.